The dear Zahrym has been awfully busy today: within a few hours of each other we’ve had a deluge of information regarding the new instances that are coming out in patch 4.3. According to these teasers we’ll be teaming up with the Dragon Aspects to combat Deathwing’s final assault on Azeroth. In a very interesting turn of events we’re treated to a possible future thanks to Nozdormu: a terrible timeline in which Dragonblight is a wasteland and Death Himself is impaled upon the towering spire of the Wyrmrest Temple. Here something is stopping Nozdormu from accessing the past and, thus, the Dragon Soul — the only artifact the Aspects can use to finally end the Earth Warder. The next instance takes place sometime during the War of the Ancients: here brave adventurers will attempt to steal the Dragon Soul away from the fount of arcane energy, the Well of Eternity. Afterwards, in the last of the new instances, players are returned to the present time to escort Thrall to Wyrmrest Temple to deliver the Dragon Soul to the Aspects.

All in all, these are shaping up to be very interesting instances. While the majority of the playerbase are going to be chomping at the bit to get a hold of new epic items, I’m going to spend most of my time taking screenshots and staring at all the NPCs I’ve never had the pleasure of, y’know, seeing in game (hi, Azshara!). It’s a very interesting build-up to the much-hyped Deathwing encounter(s), much like the three new Icecrown instances were build-ups to Icecrown Citadel and the battle against the Lich King. With these instances we’re getting a chance to rev the Hype Machine to eleven without the need for teasers or patch trailers. There’s a very big difference from seeing a preview and thinking “oh man, can’t wait to punch that dragon in the face!” and adventuring through timelines to retrieve the very item of said dragon’s demise.

Interestingly enough, both the Icecrown 5-mans and these new Deathing 5-mans take the story of the villains and expound upon them in ways we hadn’t known earlier. In the instance of Icecrown we found out that there must be a Lich King and that there was the possibility that a part of Arthas was still inside the metallic monster, holding him back. Both the Horde and Alliance got very interesting RP moments with either Jaina or Sylvanas and the ghost of Uther the Lightbringer (which, like all RP scenes in dungeons, got old fast) that delved a bit deeper into the enigma that was the Lich King.

Similarly, with the new Deathwing 5-mans, we see that… we see… um.

Well, nothing, if the previews are any indication.

Which is fitting for the Earthwarder: nothing to expound on the nothing we know about now. Sure, we know of his history and how he became who he was but little of his present condition. Like most of the villains in World of Warcraft, Deathwing is an insane monster bent on Azeroth’s destruction — a discerning feature, though, is how he became this way.

When the Titans bestowed their creations, the Dragon Aspects, with different faculties to watch over, Neltharion drew the lot of Earthwarder, the master of the soil and earth and the keeper of the secrets held within. Despite being a very large, black dragon with wings he was given sway of the ground and deep below: of the tunnels that cut through Azeroth to its core, of the fires which churned and powered the very planet, of the veins of magma miles and miles below. Everything below the sky was under the guise of Neltharion… and this was his undoing. Unlike his villainous kin, he was not driven mad by delusions of power or the loss of the ones he loved — sure, power was a part of it, but I don’t think that was in any way what really pushed Neltharion over the edge. What drove him mad was simple: it was meant to happen.

Being keeper of the tunnels and fathoms below the crust of Azeroth has a job hazard none of the other Aspects can contend with: the Old Gods. Chained below the earth by the Titans after Cyclopean battles, the Old Gods had little but whispers to aide them. Their mad jibbering had only one place to go: from the soil to the ears of the one who, for all intents and purposes, was the soil. He was doomed from the start. The only wrong he had done previously was being created. Whether or not the Titans had any idea that he would succumb to the insane piping of the Old Gods is not something we can speculate — but if they seriously couldn’t foresee a problem with putting someone in charge of beings whose only real power is to corrupt any and everything they touch, they’d be pretty terrible Titans.

TITANS: WE'RE GODLIKE AND ALSO HUGE DICKS

So here we have a dragon who succumbed to the work hazards of keeping the secrets of silent Azeroth: driven mad and emptied out by the whispers of the Old Gods. Unlike Illidan or the Arthas, there was no grace to this fall: Neltharion fell into madness hard and fast. Also unlike Arthas and Illidan, once steeped in insanity he had no goals barring the one held by his masters: the complete and utter annihilation of order and stability in Azeroth. Wanton, wholesale chaos is their goal — not the redemption of their race or proving their worth. Before the aqir began to worship the Old Gods they were without substance, more of an idea of chaos rather than beings with chaos as a goal. With their personification and entry into corporeal form came the need for harbingers and, once again, the dragon with his ear closest to the ground was the likeliest candidate.

But here’s the crux of this final goal: it’s boring. Speaking from a story perspective, there’s nothing more boring in a villain than goals this broad. Deathwing would be better suited in a long mustache to curl, cackling as he pressed the “GO” button on some mundane Laser Death Machine. He has none of the depth of Arthas or Illidan nor any of the emotional investment, which is odd considering that we knew about Deathwing long before we knew anything about the wayward paladin or Night Elf. All we’ve seen from him are steps towards Total Destruction, trying this or that plan, breeding this or that dragon, and while those are interesting distractions to fight and defuse, when the time comes to finally tear the magma dragon from the sky and bust his chest open for purple loot I’m not going to be looking forward to it like I had with Arthas or Illidan. I won’t care. I want his loot.

Given my theory that he was basically created to be driven mad by the Old Gods, there will be some sadness as I pry open his chest to loot him, but nothing else. No “FOR MURADIN!” or “IT’S KIND OF SHITTY WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU, ILLIDAN, BUT YOU’RE ALSO KIND OF A DICK SO HAVE A KNIFE THROUGH THE GUT”. No pageantry on my part. Just a cold desire to see him die and see the end of the expansion. Which is… so very sad.

Deathwing had so much potential. His best friend was Malygos — another Very Sad story, I might add — and his killer was standing not ten feet from him and he mentions nothing of it. No cries of vengeance towards Alexstraza. No mention of the children he’s lost. No sad desperation that he didn’t choose this, that he was chosen for this role by the Titans… Just the stock overuse of the word “fool” and a promise to see Azeroth born again in molten hatred. He was transformed, in the blink of an eye, from a calculating bastard to the Villain of the Expansion. He was, to turn a phrase, Transmogrified from a character with substance into a giant black box with the word $VILLAIN written on him in Helvetica.

Illidan had almost the same problem in Burning Crusade, if you’ll remember: he was rarely seen while leveling up and almost forgotten until his defeat in the Black Temple. Many players, upon reaching the final boss of the Black Temple raid, were left asking “wait, Illi-who?” because Blizzard had all but hidden him behind the shadows, casting him as the devious Man Behind The Curtain, a force unseen but “felt” in Shadowmoon Valley. They rectified this with Arthas in Wrath, but to a demoralizing degree: we saw him too much, interacted with him too much, were let off the hook by him too much. It made sense, in a way, when you defeat him, because you know that he wants you to fuel his Scourge war machine. Knowing that he planned to use you as generals to lead his armies gave me a sense of “oh, OK, kind of makes sense why he fled all those times when he could have easily tore my soul from my body”. Yet despite that it’s unfair to just forget the dozen or so times he look at you, Frostmourne in hand, and said “I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you pesky players!” and Death Gated to safety.

Blizzard has a cycle: they do something wrong, they fix it a bit too much (overbuffs), and then they go back a little too much. We saw this with raiding: BC raids were a slog because you had to go through almost all of them to catch up before the great Gear Reset around Sunwell. Wrath came and Naxx was an utter joke and raiders were saddened. (Ulduar came back fighting, being fair.) Cataclysm comes out without an introductory raid, cockblocking many guilds at the three 4.1 raids. I feel like they did this with their villains. We went from “Illi-who?” to “oh God, him again” and then back to “oh, uh, him… that dragon… Death-something”.

I don’t care about Deathwing and that’s incredibly sad because I feel I could have, given the right direction.

(“The Small Bug” is a minipost. Note how it is, in fact, mini, and how it fits snug in the palm of your hand. It’s so cute! Look at its little mandibles… and rows, and rows… of teeth.)

Hello, friends.

It’s been a long time. I’ve missed you all. While I can’t go into too much detail as to why I’ve been silent from this desk-steeped perch I can say that I have, actually, missed this place. If you’ve followed me on Twitter you know I haven’t been silent there if only because it’s easier to be “seen” in short bursts of activity as opposed to taking the time to align wood and hammer in nails to construct a blog post. Things have happened, and for that I’ll be changed, but in that (and also removed, if I want to take this levels and levels above any meaningful discussion) I’m due for some regularity.

On a comfortable note, a bear named Bear has abandoned the Earthen Ring ship and cast out his net to gather fish and any flotsam that float his way. After five years on Earthen Ring I felt it was time for a change: the server had outgrown me, or I had outgrown the server, and I no longer felt like I was enjoying my time there. Thus I began to fish for other servers and guilds and, in an instant, I found the first few breadcrumbs which would lead me to a new home.

In my searches I’ve found a new home on Drenden with Rades and his friends in TSU TAIN GUU FAITAA, a smallish guild full of people I’ve yet to find any troubles with. They are everything I envisioned my WoW-playing life to be and for their hospitality I’m so very grateful. It’s easy to find acceptance when you’re really looking – when you want and strive to be a part of a group people tend to fall into place around you. My net has caught a brilliant school of fish where I sidled up and assimilated; it’s hard to imagine ever not being there.

By the time this draft reaches the front pages on my blog I’ll have update my About Me and relevant links to any Armory characters I deign to include so that those of you with stalker tendencies (present company included!) know where to find me. In the coming week I’ll be writing regularly (I struggled not to put “again” at the end as my schedule never permitted me any sort of regular *anything*). While I would love to put deadlines for posts up, I think that’s best left where records cannot be kept so that, should I fail, I’ll only feel like I’m letting myself down as opposed to the dozen(s?) of you that read this.

In short, in summation, tl;dr: I’ve missed writing. In a time where any outlet is needed I have forsaken mine and have paid the price emotionally. As I trudged up the hill, boulder against my shoulder, a place to wax idiotic is really the most I could ask for even as I breach the hill and the stone falls back down the slope.

And to anyone who has set eyes on anything I’ve written and stifled a smile (or let one blossom on their lips) I thank you. If you never comment or ever get in touch with me know that, should we meet, the first round is on me. For those of you who don’t drink: the first round is, again, on me, but you’ll be driving me home. Just don’t get too upset if I start getting a bad case of grabby hands… It just means I like you.

Why is it a bad thing that someone can be emotionally invested in a game?

I’m not talking about fantasizing at all times of the day about their character and how it pertains to any situation, or anything really above and beyond the norms of enjoyment, but more along the line of what we bloggers feel about the games we blog about. There is a very real line between being obsessed with something and having an investment in it – this is a line some of us skate daily with anything we do and being able to straddle and ride that line for months and months are what separate some of us from the people who Need Help. After all, to blog is to love something enough to want to write about it (whether it be general life, a particular way of doing things, or any hobby you can think of), right? So there can be a general consensus that if you write often or even not so often about anything (for this discussion I’ll be referring to a game most of us know: World of Warcraft) you have investment in it, you want to think about it, you are involved in this game to a degree most are not.

I have spent a lot of time in World of Warcraft for the years I’ve been playing it doing different things: sometimes I raided, sometimes I PVP’d, sometimes I did daily quests, and other times I did none of those things but still logged onto the game. If I added up the /played time of all of my characters I would reach a number that branches out into a number of months. Therefor, friends, I have an investment in this game: that is Time. I have spent a lot of Time in this game, engrossed in the lore, swallowed up by the people I’ve met and the digital places I’ve been. I remember things that are not in the game anymore, experiences I will never go through again, and because of those things I am the man I am today. There is a Past to this game that is wholly my own, that no one has experienced as uniquely as I have – you have your Past, which I have never experienced before, and that separate but ultimately real reality shapes your investment into this game.

This reality I’ve shaped by the sum of my experiences and added onto the expectation of experience are also my investment, apart but not unconnected to Time: these are my Memories. Combine the two and you have something that has no monetary value – a Thing of pure emotional investment (for without my joy for the Time I’ve accumulated, it’d be nil) but at the same time something that is very real and very powerful. These are the things we can’t see when we play, one of the many things hidden behind the computer and the face and lodged within the mind and the heart.

I am unashamedly invested in this game. I put forth my effort and my time and I place at stake my reputation on doing certain things within the game. So when I am told that it’s “just a game” and that I “shouldn’t take things to seriously”, I’m at a loss as to how to respond. Am I to take the years I’ve spent and throw them to the wolves to be devoured? (NOTE: There is a very real truth that no one should take any sort of hobby as seriously as the person saying these things means: there are lines that you should never cross with regards to any game or any fandom. Getting upset that you and your friends cannot kill a certain internet dragon? Acceptable. Getting violent in any regards when you and your friends cannot kill a certain internet dragon? Unacceptable, completely and fully.)

For a second, let’s dissect the anatomy of this statement.

“It’s just a game” only comes into play when someone is emotionally charged (negatively or positively) by WoW and is usually said by someone with less investment. For instance: I (called Person A) play this game a total of five hours a week, you (Person B) play more than I do. I have no investment in this game: this is pure relaxation for me and I couldn’t care less if anything unique happens, all I want is to relax and enjoy myself in whatever I do. You, on the other hand, have goals you’d like to accomplish on any number of characters and care whether or not these goals come to fruition. Holding no investment in this game I can say to you, whenever you get upset or too happy, that it’s “just a game” and mean it because it’s exactly how I feel. Shaping this reality for myself, it’s hard to see any other way: this is how I play the game and if you do not play it the same way you are playing it wrong and wasting time. (NOTE: This can happen both ways. Person B plays more and has more investment and sees anything less as a waste of time and less enjoyment. Person A is not getting his money’s worth and should just unsub if this is how he plans on playing. See?) Thus is born the statement.

Despite the genuine feeling behind it, can it even hold water? Literally, yes, this is a game – there will never be any disputing that. Can this game be considered a Way of Life? Certainly: people have, do, and will shape their life to fit around the mold WoW has enforced upon them (raid times, PVP queues/teams, daily quests, reputation grinds, the AH). To the crux of the argument: are any of these things a Bad Thing? Back to our previous example: Person B plays the game for, say, 50 hours a week. To me, the writer of this blog post, this is a number that is far too high and is unhealthy. Who is to say (beyond a licensed professional [and even then it gets grey]) that this is a Bad Thing, though? If they can play that much and still work and lead what society deems a “normal life”, who are they hurting? What difference does it make?

Truth: it doesn’t. It really, really does not. Because you only raid does not mean the person who only PVPs is wasting their time. More to the point, just because someone takes this game seriously as a hobby does not mean they are wasting time or live in their parent’s basement (though this is true for some and is only sad on a case-by-case basis). It means one thing: they enjoy something you enjoy but in a different capacity, shaped by different emotions and experiences. How, really, are any of us different? We play WoW, we enjoy the game, and we actively lurk or write blogs about them.

Ever since I’ve started blogging I’ve been looking at things in a different, more selfish light: every bad thing that happens to me in game, every silly or stupid person I meet in a random, every interesting quest I do all make me wonder “is this blog-worthy?” As in “how can I exploit this situation and write about it later for the enjoyment of the few people who will read this?” I’ve heard from a few other bloggers that they’ve felt the same way and thought the same things. I can’t speak for them, but I’m not that ashamed about my new mentality. Blogging, as well as most (if not all) social media, is masturbation – you get something and you put it in public view as if to say “what I have done/made is pertinent enough to warrant your attention”. Given this I’m not surprised I’m looking for new ways to stroke it for my readers.

Something else that’s come from blogging is something I’ve commented on before on Twitter: it involves how much we perceive to know about people when our only contact with them is their blog. I blog about leveling a bear tank through World of Warcraft’s Random Dungeon Finder system. How much, from that, can you glean? Forget for a second that I’ve made comments about being a heterosexual male – what does my blog tell you about me? Do you know that I’m tall, skinny, that I work at a restaurant as a shift manager, that I’ve a love of alcohol and cigarettes, or that my actual name is one letter? Most of you would say no, and that’s the correct answer.

IDENTITY

So when I get told that I’m a literal masochist for leveling a tank through RDF, what should my response be? Do I try to tell them that I tank while leveling in order to know my class better? Should I not give a shit and just let it alone? In all honesty I went with the second option, mostly because it’s low on the list of things I need to pay attention to at this point in my life, but the thought that they know me because of a few posts I’ve written stuck with me for a while. (This is how my brain works: someone says “man I love frogs” and I think about that phrase over and over again until I have this cool idea for a cybernetic frog fanclub I want to start at my local town hall. Basically I take small things and make them big things. I’m an engineer of mental jetsam.) I mulled it over at odd times in the day, wondering how much of me they saw and how much they filled in the gaps, about how people outside of the internet do this all the time, and about how it was kind of sad that we can find people on the internet we think are pretty cool but don’t really know much about.

Like, let’s take me for a moment: one of the people who got me into blogging initially was a man who goes by the name of Rades. He runs a website that, in the past, chronicled his character’s journey in raiding as a Beast Mastery hunter. He DPS’d ToC/ICC when they were relevant in Wrath and talked about how cool it was and how neat BM hunters were. He took a subject as mundane as that and made it really interesting through some kind of literary witchcraft. With time I was a very frequent guest to his website, never commenting but always reading what he had to say. Without him knowing me I grew fond of him, grew to appreciate the things he said and his views on certain subjects.

Eventually I caved and got a Twitter account and, with time, caught the bug known as blogging. I got to know Rades as well as two separate people on the internet can without extensive Q&As (which, in my case, is not very well) through Twitter and comments on his blog. I’ve gotten acquainted with a few other people via Twitter and blogs, but that’s the nitty-gritty: I’ve simply seen the very shallow surface of what they portray on the internet. I do not know them all that well. I would not call them if my car broke down and I needed a lift. I would not ask to borrow money if I was in a bind. All I know is that sometimes I put things on Twitter, they respond, and I am happy.

For others it isn’t so simple. Going back to my previous example, Rades recently made a main change to his Death Knight. I could have commented saying “this isn’t you Rades, this isn’t the Rades I know”, but that would be disingenuous because I do not know him. In a hypothetical, he could post about something I strongly believe in and take the opposite side as me – once again, I could comment saying “oh wow really Rades? I never would have expected this from you”. Time and time again we come back to the point that I know of Rades, the internet persona, not the man behind the keyboard and his mannerisms or beliefs.

I don’t find this to be a bad thing, though, just a cautionary tale. Via other forums I have met people I came to be good friends with, that I’ve taken trips across the country with to hang out and drink with excess. People meet on the internet and get married later. I personally know people in long-distance relationships with another person they have not met, who are madly in love as any other couple. Shit like that happens, but it takes something that the hypotheticals I’ve mentioned before don’t have: a willingness from both parties to connect on a level deeper than the one we come across in our day-to-day internet life.

WE DO IT TO OURSELVES

Here’s the kicker, those of you reading with blogs: we do it to ourselves. We wax pedantic into a metaphorical microphone and hope people respond to our thoughts or data. We want the attention, we want people to talk about the things we’ve thought, we want people to see what we see and then look inside themselves. Some of us want to help (that is the foundation of our soap box) while others, like me, want to entertain: both options involve the same amount of time and energy put into our craft and both groups will feel a general sense of self-pity when no one comments on their thoughts or it seems that no one even sees their thoughts. We do this thing we do and hope it gets out there in the stream of the internet to be fetched up by bears like any ordinary salmon and yet some of us get upset when others deign to understand our minds.

I can see no problem with either group. They pander to different audiences and so I can understand why some would think they are different. Some fail to notice, though, that there is nothing different about We Who Blog: we are the same because we want the same thing. We want to belong to a community who accepts us. We pander, we tell stories, we show pictures, and we do it because there is love inside that we want to share. We love books or WoW or dragons or turnips. We love things and want others to love. There is nothing wrong with that.

I’ve seen a few people (mostly non-WoW bloggers) get upset at these things I’ve talked about, as I’ve been, and in all cases I wonder what we thought would happen? We put the gun barrel into our mouths and were surprised when a bullet slid down our throat. We want the commercialism without the intimacy, we want the sex without the cuddling, we want to be seen and to be hidden at the same time. Is this fair? Can you get into the public medium and stay hidden at the same time? It’s no surprise that the answer is a resounding yes, you can blog and have no one know a lick of shit about your real life. But know that people will see you and really try to see you, be it with love in their hearts or something else entirely.

THE MIRROR

I’m almost done, but I wanted to touch on a subject that I’ve also thought of for a while: how people construct the form of others without knowing the shape. Pretend there is a blogger who writes about turnips and how amazing they are and did you know that turnips were used by the South to lure dragons into caves where they would harvest their flames for time-traveling Nazis? Also pretend that all of this fascinates me so and I read her work for a year or a few months and then she’s all “man I’m so allergic to turnips now so I’m gonna blog about carrots because they’re like swords you can eat how awesome is that shit”. (Sound familiar? This example is almost an exact rehash of my aforementioned example concerning Sir Rades. Repeating it seems odd but I need to make sure that the situation is understood and that there is no confusion.) I don’t like this and I inform madam blogger about this terrible assault on my senses. Maybe I say mean things and maybe I’m very calm about it: the tone of my message is not the focus but how I’ve come across the conclusion that it is unacceptable for her to blog about anything other than turnips and dragon’s fire.

I know that this phenomenon is rampant in the psychology field and I’m sure they have a name for it, but I call it The Mirror. It’s what we use to fill in the blanks concerning other people when we have little knowledge on them. We see that they enjoy turnips or raiding as a Beast Master hunter and we pick up our spyglass to peer into their depths not knowing that we are looking at a mirror and not at the real person. We fill in the color-by-numbers with our own paint instead of with the colors they provide for us. I am angry about her not blogging about turnips because that’s all I care about and want from her without conceding that this is her past time, her enjoyment, and that she should do whatever she feels comfortable doing. I am imposing my morals and my bodice into her clothes and pretending that all of it is her. When we do this we effectively kill them and put ourselves in their place. By the time that happens there is almost no turning back until we get an in-depth view of her life from her.

There is no moral to this story. This is a tale sung because I see this and I thought others should think about how they view others. Do you see them for who they are or are you selfishly looking at yourself with a wig on and pretending it is someone else? This is not a chastisement but it is something that you should think about, my dear reader.

My Week in Azeroth is a weekly post detailing the things I’ve done in the game which I’ve found to be, either: A) completely cool, B) worth taking screenshots of, or C) something I know is only cool to me but my ego demands I post it anyways. Nothing in this post is serious; it’s a fun thing to do on the weekends when I’m normally very busy. Was your week in Azeroth just as cool as mine? Let me know in the comments!

I love slow weeks, don’t you? No hassle, no deadlines to meet, just you and the cold silence. That’s what this week has been like for me in WoW. I had no raids (indeed, no raid team), no dailies I have to do, no professions I have to level… which leaves me with time to just enjoy the game. Which is really nice. For the past few weeks I’ve been almost frantic trying to find a raid team in AIE who needs a hunter and, surprise, we seem to be too numerous. I almost quit the guild to join an afternoon progression guild on the same server, but thought against it when I was told the guild leader was a hunter and they had another one in their ranks. Now, gear isn’t everything, but I’d at least like a shot at something when it drops, yanno?

None of that right now, though. I can raid later. For now I’ve just been getting some classy achievements on Frite that I’ve been putting off for a while. This mostly included a mad-dash to get the Elder achievements, which I haven’t done in three years. The verdict? Make that FOUR years I’ve let the achievement/holiday slide by me. I’m really bad at this holiday thing. I wanted to do it, I really did, because I want at least one proto-drake, but… maybe next year? *SIGH* Procrastination, you win again.

In happy fun time fuck Tol Barad news:

I dislike Tol Barad. I disliked the Isle of Quel’Danas back in BC. I disliked the Argent Tournament in Wrath. Now, I don’t mind dailies, as I need something to do while my DPS dungeon queue ticks ever forward, but something about having a centralized daily hub that you go to every single day irks me. Maybe it’s the convenience. Maybe I just hate things for no reason. Either way, I’m not done with Tol Barad dailies, as I’ve yet to get the tabard/seagull pet/spotlight/ghost wolf. Sadface. I think I may have a problem.

GLORY TO THE SIN’DOREI

Olim, formerly an Alliance scum, is back where she belongs in the Horde. I had a hard time choosing whether or not to be a tauren or blood elf, but in the end it came down to one thing: which do I think is cooler? To be honest, while I love the Tauren and actually have a few on other servers slowly leveling whenever I get tired of Earthen Ring, I don’t think that Olim was meant to be one. She’s a scientist. Her knowledge of the Light is academic and precise. I just can’t see her being anything but, and the blood elves fit that trope to the letter. The option of gender-changing her was another obstacle, as I think both genders have horrible casting animations. In the end I went with the one who looked less like an idiot: the female.

This means I get to heal again! Yay! And Frite gets free alchemy transmutes/Volatile elements! Yaaay! Everyone wins, but mostly I win!

The prospect of raiding on Olim as opposed to Frite has crossed my mind several times. I’m probably going to end up making her my raiding main because, let’s face it, healers are in far more demand than hunters. This was the case in ICC, and it always made me a bit sad not to be playing the character I refer to as my main, but it’s a rather small sacrifice to get back into raiding (something I want to do terribly).

ARCHAEOLOGY

I’ve gotten into it. I really have, guys. Its mindless fun, like fishing but with more time on my pretty new drake. Around 70 I got my first rare dig (Skeleraptor pet! Score!). Because Archaeology hates me, I didn’t get enough Fossil digsites to make it until around 145, but make it I did damn it!

He’s incredibly adorable and I can’t wait to get his older brother, the Skeleraptor mount.

PAZDINGO UPDATE

I decided to stop tanking for a few levels on Paz and just quest. No pressure, no key-spamming, no cursing at stupid DPS, just me and kitty form and a love for pouncing.

There are some hilarious quests involving this bloodmachine. A random goblin in Gadgetzan wants you to kill basilisks/rocs/hyenas and summon the small gidget so it can harvest their carcass. The bot loves his job, as you can see, and makes what would have normally been a dull “kill 10 pixels” quest into something I actually enjoyed doing. Blizzard’s learning a lot when it comes to quest design and the role that NPCs play in them. This little machine may not be a named NPC who will go on to kill Deathwing, but I’m certainly going to do his quests every time I level a character through Tanaris. Blizzard has been doing this all throughout Cata: Zen’Kiki from the Western Plaguelands (the entire REASON I made my druid a troll :D), Darnell from the Forsaken starting quests, and Orkus the Kingslayer from his quests in Hillsbrad all come to mind when I think of NPCs I won’t be forgetting soon.

There’s a post about NPCs and how Cataclysm has changed their role somewhere in my head, but Rades can do that post a thousand times better than I can.

How was your week, gang? Any phat loot? Cool mounts obtained? RP gear farmed? I wanna know in the comments!